The secular angel in contemporary children's literature: David ...

many respects, but also quite knowledgeable about some issues. Her innocence, however, is
also the reason why she is able to read the alethiometer with no prior education or training.
Although this is revealed in AS by Xaphania, it is also hinted in GC when Farder Coram tells
Dr. Lanselium that Lyra is “a strange innocent creature, […]. How she comes to read that
instrument I couldn’t guess, but I believe her when she talks of it” (Pullman, GC, 176).
Lyra’s innocence has been protected by the walls of the College, yet this begins to change
when Mrs Coulter takes her away. The experiences Lyra acquires throughout her journey are
also indicative of the extent of her innocence or ignorance in the beginning. The most evident
example is that although she effortlessly and very cleverly outsmarts the King of the bears,
she is intimidated and even scared of Will, who is barely older than her. Another powerful
example is after Roger has been killed and Asriel has fled. She and Pantalaimon sit and look
at the city in the sky, and Lyra finally realizes that she can no longer trust the people around
her, “We’ve heard them all talk about Dust, and they’re so afraid of it, and you know what?
We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil
and wrong…” (GC, 1995, 398). She understands that she is responsible for Roger’s death,
despite the fact that both she and Pantalaimon “thought [they] were helping him” (GC, 1995,
398) and decide to at least attempt to rectify their mistake by promising themselves that “Next
time [they]’ll check everything and ask all the questions [they] can think of” (GC, 1995, 398).
Blind trust in the word of adults and authority figures is linked here to her initial naivety and
ignorance, which she gradually and eventually learns to shed.
‘The Little Girl Lost’ has been surrounded by some controversy because of the belief that,
in the poem, sleep represents sexual awakening, a notion that does not stray far from HDM
and Lyra’s own awakening in the end of AS. According to Jonathan Cook, Blake’s poem
“transforms its sources and produces meanings which, I think, challenge deeply rooted
assumptions about the nature of sexuality” (Aers et al, 1981, 51). The parallels that can be
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